10/16/2016

Free GM Resource: Library of Congress Map Collections

Free GM Resource: Library of Congress Map Collections
I thought I'd share another map porn Free GM Resource that has a special meaning for me. The Library of Congress has well over 5 million maps in various collections, but only a fraction are available online. You can check the various online map collections in the Library of Congress here.

When I was a high school Freshman I got to go to Washington DC to compete in National History Day. Being the proper nerd that I was, when we had a day to tour the Capitol Mall I made a bee-line to the Library of Congress and pretty much got signed up for a library card. I had no clue when/if I'd ever be back to DC again, but dammit....I had my access card in case I did...and in nearly 30 years of travelling I never have....

Some good stuff here to check out.....

10/15/2016

Frugal GM Review: White Box Omnibus

Frugal GM Review: White Box Omnibus
Yesterday I decided to jump on the Deal of the Day over at DriveThruRPG, picking up the White Box Omnibus for 1/2 off. It was after I picked it up I realized I don't have a copy of the White Box rules to begin with....

So for the time being I have some supplementary material for a game system I don't own. This fact is not being factored into this review.

Free Map#069 Some Hand-Drawn Work

Free Map#069 Some Hand-Drawn Work
Today I decided, after a good week of kicking a few ideas around in my head, to finally try and do a complete map manually....almost like a real RPG cartographer.

My line work seemed a bit uneven and while I thought I did a good job coloring in the map, when scanned I hated it. So much so that I about wrote it off.

Instead I started playing with my computer tools and figured out how to salvage the map to something a bit better. I'm thinking next time I'll intend to mix hand-drawn work with computer scanning & processing. Better to stick with what I know and take baby steps into new territory.

Like usual you can click on either graphic in the post to go to my Patreon Page for the map, or you can use this link.

Free Map# 069

10/13/2016

Fat Dragon Games Sale Sunday, October 16th

Fat Dragon Games Sale Sunday, October 16th
I've mentioned before that Tom Tullis of Fat Dragon is a pretty good guy. I know I've mentioned & reviewed a few of Fat Dragon's products (great stuff) over the years and even promoted the recent Dragonlock 2 Kickstarter, which ended only a couple of days ago. My 12 regular readers might be a bit weary of yet another Fat Dragon post, but I'm going to risk it anyway....

This Sunday Fat Dragon Games is having a sale to benefit a cancer charity. I do not know the complete details, but when I do I'll edit this post.

From Facebook: "On October 4th, the FDG crew lost a long time friend to cancer. Sherilyn Daugherty was a wonderful friend and supporter, and we miss her dearly. Sherry fought her cancer with a grace and strength that will continue to be an inspiration to us all for the rest of our lives. On this Sunday, Oct. 16th, FDG will be running a sale and donating all the net proceeds to her favorite cancer charity, Steps for Sarcoma, in her memory. If there's a terrain set you've been wanting, consider grabbing it this Sunday, get a discount on it, and help a wonderful charity, too"

Facebook Sale Announcement Post


10/11/2016

New Big Dragon Games Unlimited Sale

New Big Dragon Games Unlimited Sale
While going through my morning reading (online), I discovered that New Big Dragon Games Unlimited is having a HUGE sale on OneBookshelf.

Get the five biggest titles available for $1 each!

Some of these items I've reviewed:
     CC1 Creature Compendium (review) (purchase)
     AX2 D30 Sandbox Companion (review) (purchase)
     AX1 D30 DM Companion (review) (purchase)
     PX1 Basic Psionics Handbook (review) (purchase)
     VA1 Valley of the Five Fires (purchase)

The links above are affiliate links that don't cost either the publisher or the purchaser, but if you purchase one of these titles (you should pick up all five) I might get a nickle. I don't care so much for the nickle, but I do care about these awesome titles.....

....sale ends tonight at midnight!

10/10/2016

Free GM Resource Twofer: A Cool Adventure and A "New" RPG

Free GM Resource Twofer: A Cool Adventure and A "New" RPG
Today's Free GM Resource is an adventure created for the RISUS (The Anything RPG) game system.....which I know jack squat about, but it is free, which makes today another bit of a twofer. Toast of the Town is a great 42 page PDF detailing an adventure in the town of Trostig.

Now I only skimmed through the adventure and it felt like there would need to be a fair amount of prep needed to run the thing, but I could easily see tossing the adventure to the side and using Trostig as a cool town in just about any FRPG campaign. There were a lot of cool little details that really made Trostig "pop". Even if, for some reason, you didn't want to run RISUS....didn't want to use Trostig as an in-game locale, I still recommend picking this freebie up for several reasons. First would be those little details you could strip-mine like there's no tomorrow. Lastly would be just to look at the sections of the download to see how the author put things together....I see some great organizational ideas I'd love to steal for my own locale-building.

Toast of the Town is available as a Google Drive download, but I have not added direct links to this post. Instead they go to a holding page on the Cumberland Games & Diversions website which does have those links. I'm not a fan of direct-linking and cutting out the middle-man that made this freebie available in the 1st place.

10/08/2016

Frugal GM Review: Simple Caverns from Inked Adventures

Frugal GM Review: Simple Caverns from Inked Adventures
This week's Frugal GM Review really makes me feel like I'm just "phoning it in" since I could've guessed this would be a 5 star review just by looking at the intro-graphic over at DriveThruRPG.

Inked Adventures is on our +12 Links of Helpfulness for a reason, which is they/he (Billiam Babble) always does a good job. As soon as I saw the Inked Adventures logo I was sold....providing Simple Caverns as a PWYW made this a total no-brainer, must-get product.

The cover photo really spells this product out..."Hand Drawn Cavern Floor Cut-Up Sheets" .....I couldn't come up with a simpler explanation than that. The whole idea is that you can select a floor you want, print out as many as you need, and then cut them out to serve as your cavern floor. You could easily tile multiple pages to make a larger battlemat and these sheets can easily work with any 2.5 system like those from DM Scotty.

10/03/2016

Free GM Resource: Dungeon Builder Demo

Free GM Resource: Dungeon Builder Demo
I'm a little late posting this week's Free GM Resource because I slept in and because I was too busy playing with the resource itself. We can just pretend it was "product testing".

Dungeon Builder is an isometric map maker for just about every desktop platform. It is currently on Kickstarter for funding, but for now the duo of Aage Jørgensen & Kim Markfoged have put up a feature-limited demo of the program.

The links above go straight to the Kickstarter and any links below go to the demo download page.

While it is only a demo, you can still build some pretty usable dungeons, especially if you are just trying to make the rooms themselves. I built the bulk of the couple rooms below in a minute or two and then spent a while just screwing around to see how the editing went.

My quick dungeon
You can't save anything you create with the Dungeon Builder Demo, but you can easily take screen shots.

The Kickstarter is already funded and it'll cost about $45 to get the program through Kickstarter. That seems like a lot to me, but since I cannot draw isometric maps and wish I could, that price isn't terrible....

Obviously your mileage might vary, but for the price of free, I think the demo is well worth downloading.